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Robert Edward Lbe. 



AK ADDRESS 



AB.OHER ANDERSON. 



Robert Edward Lee, 



AN ADDRESS 



DELIVERED AT THE 



Dedication of the Monument 



General Robert Edward Lee 



RICHMOND, VIRGINIA, 



MAY 29, 1890, 



Archer Anderson 



PUBLISHED BY THE LEE MONUMENT ASSOCIATION. 



RICHMOND: 

WM. ELLIS JONES, PRINTER. 
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ADDRESS 



Fellow Citizens, — 

A people carves its own image in the 
monuments of its great men. Not Virginians only, 
not only those who dwell in the fair land stretch- 
ing from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, but all who 
bear the American name may proudly consent that 
posterity shall judge them by the structure, which we 
are here to dedicate and crown with a heroic fip"ure. 
For, as the Latin poet said that, wherever the Roman 
name and sway extended, ^/lere should be the sepul- 
chre of Pompey, so to-day, in every part of America, 
the character and fame of Robert Edward Lee are 
treasured as a "possession for all time." 

And, if this be true of that crreat name, what shall 
be said of the circumstances which surround us on 
this day of solemn commemoration ? 

That at the end of the first quarter of a century 
after the close of a stupendous civil war, in which 
more than a million men struggled for the mastery 
during four years of fierce and bloody conflict, we 
should see the Southern States in complete possession 
of their local self-government, the Federal Constitu- 
tion unchanged save as respects the great issues sub- 



ROBERT ED WARD LEE. 



mitted to the arbitrament of war, and the defeated 
party — whilst in full and patriotic sympathy with all 
the present grandeur and imperial promise of a 
reunited country — still not held to renounce any 
glorious memory, but free to heap honors upon their 
trusted leaders, living or dead — all this reveals a 
character in which the American people may well be 
content to be handed down to history. 

All this, and more, will be the testimony of the 
solid fabric we here complete. It will recall the gen- 
erous initiative and the unflagging zeal of those noble 
women of the South to whom in large measure we 
owe this auspicious day ; it will bear its lasting wit- 
ness as the voluntary offering of the people, not the 
governments of the Southern States; and, standing 
as a perpetual memorial of our great leader, it will 
stand not less as an enduring record of what his 
fellow-citizens deemed most worthy to be honored. 

What kind of greatness, then — it may be fitting on 
this spot to ask — what kind of greatness should men 
most honor in their fellow-men ? Vast and varied is 
the circle of human excellence — where is our para- 
mount allegiance due? 

In that "temple of silence and reconciliation," that 
Westminster Abbey of Florence, whither so many 
paths of glory led, you may read one answer to this 
question on the cenotaph of Dante in the inscription : 
" Honor the sublime poet." These words the medi- 



ROBERT ED WARD LEE. 



aeval poet himself applied to his great master, Virgil. 
After near six centuries they still touch some of the 
deepest feelings of the heart. And with them come 
crowding on the mind memories of a long line of 
poets, artists, historians, orators, thinkers who have 
sounded all the depths of speculation, princes of 
science who have advanced the frontiers of ordered 
knowledge, of the least of whom it may be said — as 
Newton's gravestone records of the greatest — that 
he was an honor to the race of men. Yes, if our life 
were only thought and emotion, if will and action and 
courage did not make up its greatest part, men might 
justly reverence the genius of poets and thinkers 
above all other greatness. But strong and natural 
as is the inclination of those given up to the intellectual 
life thus to exalt the triumphs of the imagination and 
the reason, such is not the impulse of the great heart 
of the multitude. And the multitude is right. In a 
large and true sense conduct is more than intellect, 
more than art or eloquence — to have done great 
things is nobler than to have thought or expressed 
them. 

Thus, in every land, the most conspicuous monu- 
ments commemorate the great actors, not the great 
thinkers of the world's history ; and among these 
men of action, the great soldier has always secured 
the first place in the affections of his countrymen. 
What means this universal outburst of the love and 



6 ROBERT EDWARD LEE. 



admiration of our race for men who have been fore- 
most in war? Is the common sense of mankind 
bUnded by the blaze of mihtary glory? Or does 
some deep instinct teach us that the character of the 
ideal commander is the orrandest manifestation in 
which man can show himself to man ? The power 
and the fascination of this ideal are attested by the 
indulofent admiration we bestow on men who, on the 
one side, grandly fill it out, while, on the other, falling 
grievously below it, weighed down by something base 
and earthly. Thus, standing before that marvellous 
monument in Berlin from which Frederick "in his 
habit as he lived" looks down in homely greeting to 
his Prussian people, and seems still to warn them that 
the art which won empire can alone maintain it, we 
forget the selfish ambition, the petty foibles, the chill- 
ing life — we remember only the valor, the consummate 
skill, the superhuman constancy of the hero-king. 
Or if, turning from a career so crowned with final 
triumph, we recall how, for lack of a like commander, 
France in our own day has been trampled under foot, 
we may conceive the devotion with which Frenchmen 
still crowd about the tomb of Napoleon — a name that, 
in spite of all its lurid associations, in spite of all the 
humiliations of the Second Empire, has still had 
power to lift the French nation, during these latter 
years, from abasement and despair. 

Surely there must be something superhuman in the 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE. 7 

genius of a great commander, if it can make us for- 
getful of the woes and criines so often attending it. 
How freely, then, may we lavish our admiration and 
gratitude, when no allowance has to be made for 
human weakness, when we find military greatness 
allied with the noblest public and private virtue ! 
Here, at last, in this ideal union is that rare greatness 
which men may most honor in their fellow-men. 

It is the singular felicity of this Commonwealth of 
Virginia to have produced two such stainless captains. 
The fame of the one, consecrated by a century of 
universal reverence and the growth of a colossal 
empire, the result of his heroic labors, has been com- 
memorated in this city by a monument, in whose 
majestic presence no man ever received the sugges- 
tion of a thought that did not exalt humanity. The 
fame of the other, not yet a generation old anu won 
in a cause that was lost, is already established by that 
itnpartlal judgment of foreign nations, which antici- 
pates the verdict of the next age, upon an equal 
pinnacle, and millions of our countrymen, present 
here with us in their thouo-hts and echoino- back from 
city and plain and mountain top the deep and rever- 
ent voice of this vast multitude, will this day confirm 
our solemn declaration that the monument to Georo-e 
Washington has found its only fitting complement and 
companion in a monument to Robert Lee. 

I ventured to say that, if we take account of human 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE. 



nature in all its complexity, the character of the ideal 
commander is the grandest manifestation in which 
man can show himself to man. Consider some of the 
necessary elements of this great character. And let 
us begin with its humbler virtues, its more lowly 
labors. If we take the commander merely on his 
administrative side, what treasures of energy, forecast, 
and watchfulness do we not see him expending in the 
prosaic work of providing the means of subsistence 
for his army! He is always confronted on a vast 
scale with man's elemental and primitive want — his 
daily bread. The matter is so vital that he can never 
commit it entirely to the staff. The control of the 
whole subject must be ever in his own grasp. 

Then, he must have not only an intimate knowl- 
edge of the geography and resources of the theatre 
of war as maps and books give them, but an instinct 
for topography and an unerring faculty for finding 
the way by night or day through forest and field, 
usually to be met with only in men who pass their 
whole lives in the open air. To this add a complete 
acquaintance with all parts of army work and organi- 
zation — a very genius for detail, an artillerist's eye 
for distance, and an engineer's judgment and invent- 
iveness, with a wide and critical comprehension of 
all the great campaigns of history. But he must 
possess a still higher knowledge. He must know 
human nature, he must be wise in his judgment and 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE. 9 

selection of his own agents, and especially must he 
be skilled to read his adversary's mind and character. 
Upon this varied and profound knowledg-e will clepend 
the success of those large plans embracing the whole 
theatre of war which soldiers call strategy. 

Now, combine all these elements, conceive of them 
as expanded into genius, and you may form some idea 
of the merely intellectual equipment of a great com- 
mander. But he might have all this and he fit only 
to be a chief of staff. 

The business of war is with men ; the business of 
a general is to lead men in that most wonderful of 
human organizations, an army — on that dread arena, 
the field of battle. And now come into play the 
qualities of heart and soul. Consecrated to his high 
office, a general ought to be morally the best, the 
most just, the most generous, the most patriotic man 
among his countrymen. He must not only be their 
greatest leader — he must know how to make every 
man in his army believe him to be their greatest 
leader And mere belief is not enough. There must 
be in him a power to call forth an enthusiastic and 
passionate devotion. Of all careers a military life 
makes the heaviest demand on the self-effacement and 
self-sacrifice of those who are to follow and obey. 
Love and enthusiasm for a leader are the only forces 
powerful enough to raise men to this heroic pitch. 
Without them an army is a mob, or at most a spirit- 



10 ROBERT ED WARD LEE. 



less machine. With them it becomes capable of the 
sublimest exhibitions of valor and devotion. 

But, essential as is this magnetic power in the 
leader to draw all hearts, to quiet jealousies, to com- 
pel obedience, and to fuse the thoughts and passions 
of thousands of individual men into a single mass of 
martial ardor, all these gifts may be present and the 
true commander absent. Politicians have had these 
gifts, soldiers even have had these gifts, and utterly 
failed in the command of armies. To all these rich 
endowments there must be added an imperturbable 
moral courage equal to any burden or buffet of for- 
tune, and physical intrepidity in its highest and 
grandest forms — not only the valor which carries a 
division commander under orders with overmastering 
rush to some desperate assault, like Cleburne's at 
Franklin, or makes him stand immovable as a stone 
wall, as Bee saw Jackson at Manassas, but an aggres- 
sive and unresting ardor to fall on the enemy, like 
that which burned in Nelson, when he wrote : " I will 
fio-ht them the moment I can reach their fleet, be they 
at anchor or under sail — I will not lose one moment 
in fighting the French fleet — I mean to follow them if 
they go to the Black Sea — not a moment shall be lost 
in pursuing the enemy. * * * I will not lose a 
moment in bringing them to action." 

With this fierce passion for fight, the general must 
unite the self-control, which will refuse battle or calmly 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE. 11 



await attack, and, not least, the fortitude which can 
endure defeat. For weeks and months he must be 
ready at any moment of the day or night to draw on 
these vast resources without ever showing weakness 
under the protracted strain. And over and above all 
there must preside some God-like power, which, in 
the crisis of strategy or the storm of battle, not only 
preserves to the commander all these high faculties, 
but actually intensifies and expands them. In those 
irrevocable moments, when the decision of an instant 
may determine the destiny of States, mere talents 
must spring into genius, and mind and outward eye 
send Hashes of intuition through the smoke of battle 
and the dark curtain on which the enemy's move- 
ments are to be read only in fitful shadows. In that 
hour of doom, a nation's fate, a people's ransom may 
be staked on one man's greatness of soul. 

It is the recognition in Lee of the principal elements 
of this high ideal — courage, will, energy, insight, 
authority — the organizing mind with its eagle glance, 
and the temperament for command broad-based upon 
fortitude, hopefulness, joy in battle — all exalted by 
heroic purpose and kindled with the glow of an 
unconquerable soul ; it is, besides and above all, the 
unique combination in him of moral strength with 
moral beauty, of all that is great in heroic action with 
all that is good in common life, that will make of this 



12 ROBER T ED WARD EEE. 



pile of stone a sacred shrine, dear throug^hout coming 
ages, not to soldiers only, but to all 

" Helpers and friends of mankind." 

Let a brief recital show that these are words of 
truth and soberness. 

Lee was fortunate in his birth, for he sprang from 
a race of men who had just shown, in a world-famous 
struggle, all of the virtues and few of the faults of 
a class selected to rule because fittest to rule. His 
father had won a brilliant fame as a cavalry leader, 
and the signal honor of the warm friendship of 
Washington. The death of "Light- Horse" Harry 
Lee when Robert Lee was only eleven years old 
made the boy the protector of his mother — a school 
of virtue not unfitted to develop a character that 
nature had formed for honor. It was partly, no 
doubt, the example of his father's brilliant service, 
but mainly the soldier's blood which flowed in his 
veins, that impelled him to seek a place in the Military 
Academy at West Point. He was presented to Presi- 
dent Jackson, and we may well believe the story that 
the old soldier was quickly won by the gallant youth, 
and willingly secured him to the army. I cannot 
dwell on his proficiency in the military school, or his 
early years of useful service in the corps of engi- 
neers, though, doubtless, those practical labors had an 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE. 13 



important intluence upon the future leader of that 
Army of Northern Virginia, so famous for its 

" — looniing^ bastions fringed with fire" — 

the creation of the axe and spade. 

One auspicious incident of that time I must not 
pass by — his marriage to the great-granddaughter of 
Washington's wife. Thus another tie was formed 
which connected him by daily associations of family 
and place with Washington's fame and character. 
He became, in some sort, Washington's direct per- 
sonal representative. Is it fanciful to suppose that 
all this had an immediate effect on his nature, so 
moulded already to match with whatever was great 
and noble ? It may well be believed that Lee made 
Washington his model of public duty, and, in every 
Important conjuncture of his life, unconsciously, no 
doubt, but effectively asked himself the question: 
"How would Washincrton have acted in this case?" 

The greater elements of Lee's character must 
appear in the story of his later life. Let me try now 
to give some conception of his noble person, his 
grace, his social charm, his pure life — of that inborn 
dignity which with a look could check familiarity or 
convey rebuke, of that manly beauty and command- 
ing presence, fitted alike to win child or maiden and 
to awaken in the sternest soldier an expectation and 
assurance of pre-eminence and distinction. It was 



14 ROBERT ED WARD EEE. 



this which drew from a great master of the art of 
war, whom a beneficent Providence still spares to be 
a model of every manly and martial virtue to the sons 
of the youngest soldiers who followed his unstained 
banner, it was the recollection of the fascination of 
Lee's manner and person in the days of their early 
service that drew from General Joseph E. Johnston 
these words of vivid and loving description: "No 
other youth or man so united the qualities that win 
warm friendship and command high respect. For he 
was full of sympathy and kindness, genial and fond 
of gay conversation and even of fun * * * while 
his correctness of demeanor and language and atten- 
tion to all duties, personal and official, and a dignity 
as much a part of himself as the elegance of his per- 
son, gave him a superiority that every one acknowl- 
edged in his heart." 

It was this which made Lord Wolseley say of him 
as he saw him in later years : " I have met many of 
the great men of my time, but Lee alone impressed 
me with the feeling that I was in the presence of a 
man who was cast in a grander mould, and made of 
different and finer metal than all other men. He is 
stamped upon my memory as a being apart and supe- 
rior to all others in every way." 

Thus endowed to command the love and respect 
of every human being that came into his presence, 
fully equipped in every military art, temperate, pure, 



R OBER T ED WARD LEE. 1 5 

healthful, brave, consciously following duty as his pole 
star, and all unconsciously burnino- with ardor to win 
a soldier's fame, he entered upon that war with Mex- 
ico, which was destined to prove a training-ground 
for the chief leaders in the conflict between the States. 
There he soon gave proof of great qualities for war. 
But I may stay only to mention one incident in which 
he displayed such rare force of will, such aggressive 
and untiring enterprise as at once marked him out for 
high command. It was just before the battle of Con- 
treras. Scott had learned through Lee's reconnois- 
sance that the M^-.ican position could be attacked in 
rear by a difficult movement across a pathless and 
rugged volcanic field called the " Pedregal." A pain- 
ful march had brought the turning division at night- 
fall to the decisive point, and Lee was called into 
council by the division commander. The council 
sat long. At last, about nine at night, it resolved on 
Lee's advice upon an attack at dawn. But it was 
essential that communication should be established 
with Scott's headquarters. Lee declared his purpose 
to effect this communication, and through the stormy 
night, alone and on foot, with enemies on either hand, 
he pushed his way across that volcanic waste, com- 
parable only in the difficulties it presented to some 
Alpine glacier rent with yawning chasms. He won 
his way to Scott by midnight. At daybreak as engi- 
neer he guided the front attack led by Twiggs. The 



16 ROBERT ED WARD LEE. 



turning column heard their comrades' guns. They 
fell on the Mexican rear. A brief and bloody resist- 
ance served only to heighten the triumph of Ameri- 
can skill and valor. The position was won and 
Contreras, to the eye of history, prefigures Chancel- 
lorsville. 

General Scott described this exploit of Lee's as 
" the greatest feat of physical and moral courage per- 
formed by any individual, in his knowledge, pending 
the campaign." History will record, as Scott himself 
nobly admitted, that Lee was Scott's right arm in 
Mexico. 

I may not dwell on the round of engineering duties 
which Lee discharged with exactness and fidelity 
during the years following the Mexican war. Of 
more interest is his first actual command of troops, on 
his appointment as lieutenant-colonel of the famous 
Second cavalry serving in Texas. This frontier ser- 
vice of three or four years was important in develop- 
ing his military character, though it may seem an 
inadequate preparation in the details of command 
when compared, for instance, with Wellington's long 
apprenticeship in India. But genius has many schools, 
and an earnest, observant mind quickly grasps the 
lessons of practice. 

A dark cloud of war was now threatening to burst 
over a hitherto peaceful country. The routine of 
frontier administration and Indian police must have 



ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 17 

seemed but idle child's play amid the fierce passions 
of that rising tempest of civil strife. No man who 
could think could think of anything but the impend- 
ing danger. And Lee, the son of a leader of the 
Revolution, closely linked by descent and association 
with the men who won American independence and 
made the American Constitution. Lee, inheriting along 
with the most ardent love of the Union, a paramount 
loyalty to his native State, now saw himself obliged to 
make hir. choice and take his side in an irrepressible 
conflict. No more painful struggle ever tore the 
heart of a patriot. He had served the whole country 
in a gallant army, which commanded all his affection. 
He, better than most men, knew the orreat resources 
of the North and West. He had sojourned and 
labored in every part of the land, and could appre- 
ciate the arguments drawn from its physical charac- 
teristics, from its great river systems and mountain 
ranges for an indissoluble union. He knew Northern 
men in their homes ; he knew the bravery of the 
Northern soldiers who filled our regular regiments in 
Mexico. He was above the prejudices and taunts of 
the day, which belittled Northern virtue and cour- 
age. He knew that, with slight external differences, 
there was a substantial identity of the American race 
in all the States, North and South. He was equally 
above the weak and passionate view of slavery as 
good in itself, into which the fanatical and unconsti- 



18 ROBERT EDWARD LEE. 



tutional agitation of the Abolition party had driven 
many strong minds in the South. He regarded slavery 
as an evil which the South had inherited and must 
be left to mitigate and, if possible, extirpate by wise 
and gradual measures. He, if any man of that time, 
was capable of weighing with calmness the duty of 
the hour. With him, the only question then, as at 
every moment of his spotless life, was to find out 
which way duty pointed. 

Against the urgent solicitations of General Scott, 
in defiance of the temptations of ambition — for the 
evidence is complete that the command of the United 
States army was offered to him — in manifest sacrifice 
of all his pecuniary interests, he determined that duty 
bade him side with his beloved Virginia, He laid 
down his commission, and solemnly declared his pur- 
pose never to draw his sword save in behalf of his 
native State. 

And what was that native State to whose defence 
he henceforth devoted his matchless sword ? 

It was a Commonwealth older than the Union of 
the States ; it was the first abode of English freedom 
in the Western World ; it was the scene of the earliest 
organized legislative resistance to the encroachments 
of the mother country ; it was the birthplace of the 
immortal leader of our Revolutionary armies, and of 
many of the architects of the Federal Constitution ; 
it was the central seat of that doctrine of State sove- 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE. 19 

reignty sanctioned by the great names of Jefferson 
and Madison ; it was a land rich in every gift of the 
earth and sky — richer still in its race of men, brave, 
frugal, pious, loving honor, but fearing God ; it was a 
land hallowed then by memories of an almost un- 
broken series of patriotic triumphs, but now, after the 
wreck and ruin of four years of unsuccessful war, 
consecrated anew by deeds of heroism and devotion, 
whose increasing lustre will borrow a brighter radi- 
ance from their sombre background of suffering and 
defeat. And this day and on this spot, with height- 
ened pride and undiminished love, the sons of that 
Old Dominion may still salute her in the patriot 
Roman's verse — 

" Salve magna parens frugnm, Saturnia tellus. 
Magna viniin." 

This was the land that Lee defended. 

Accepting the commission of major-general of the 
forces of Virginia, he soon passed by the necessary 
and rapid sway of events into the service of the Con- 
federate States. Virginia had become the batde- 
ground on which the Confederacy was to win or lose 
its independence, and Lee could only defend Vir- 
ginia as a general of the Confederate army. 

During the early months of the war he labored 
unceasingly and with success in the organization of 
those armies, which stemmed and dashed back the 



20 ROBERT EDWARD LEE. 



first flood of invasion. Here his patience, his careful 
and minute attention to details, his knowledgfe of 
men, and particularly of those officers of the old 
army who espoused the Southern cause, his thorough 
military preparation, and, more than all else, his con- 
viction that the war would be long and desperate, 
made him an invaluable counsellor of the Confede- 
rate Executive. His co-operation with the more for- 
tunate generals, chosen to lead armies in the field, 
was zealous and cordial, and he did not murmur when 
at last, in August, 1861, his turn for active service 
came in what promised to be a thankless and in- 
auspicious duty. 

The Confederate arms had been unfortunate in 
Northwestern Virginia. Garnett had been over- 
whelmed and defeated. Loring, with large reinforce- 
ments, had not pressed forward to snatch the lost 
ground from an enemy weakened by great detach- 
ments. So Lee was sent to Valley Mountain to com- 
bine all the elements of our strength, and by a stroke 
of darinof recover West Virginia. The Confederate 
President was convinced that he was the leader for 
such a campaign — the opinion of the army and of 
the people enthusiastically confirmed his choice. 

Lee quickly mastered the problem before him by 
personal reconnoissances, and laid his plans with skill 
and vigor. But the attack on Cheat Mountain, which 
a year later would have been a brilliant success, 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE. 21 



ended in failure and mortification. Lee was able to 
show to the pubHc but one of the high quahties of a 
great g-eneral — magnanimity under disappointment 
and defeat. His old comrades of the Mexican war 
knew him ; the Confederate President knew him and 
still believed in him ; but the verdict of the o-eneral 
public on Robert Lee in the winter of 1861-62 might 
have been summed up in the historian's judgment of 
Galba, who "by common consent would have been 
deemed fit to command, had he never commanded." 

In such a school of patience and self-control was 
our great leader destined to pass the first fourteen 
months of the war. 

The first day of "Seven Pines" had been fought, 
the fierce temper and stern valor of the Army of 
Northern Virginia had been established, a brilliant 
success had been won on our right by Longstreet 
and D. H. Hill, and General Johnston, about night- 
fall, was arranging a vigorous and combined attack 
for the morrow. At that moment, Johnston, whose 
body was already covered with honorable scars, was 
stricken down by two severe wounds, and the army 
was deprived of its leader. 

On the afternoon of the next day, about five miles 
below Richmond, Lee assumed command of that 
army called of Northern Virginia, but fidy represent- 
ing the valor and the virtue of every Southern State, 
that army which henceforth was to be the insepara- 
ble partner of his fame, that army whose heroic toils, 



22 ROBER T ED WARD EEE. 



marches, battles would still, if every friendly record 
perished, be emblazoned for the admiration of future 
ages in its adversary's recital of the blood and trea- 
sure expended to destroy it. So we are able now to 
measure Hannibal's greatness only by the magnitude 
of Rome's sacrifices and devotion. 

At any period of the war the loss of Richmond 
would probably have been fatal to the Confederacy, 
lliis truth is the key to the campaigns of the Army of 
Northern Virginia. It will explain and justify in 
Lee's conduct many apparent violations of sound 
principles of war. Ordinarily, nothing is more fatal 
than to make the fortunes of an army turn on the 
defence ot a position. This was Pemberton's error 
at Vicksburg — it was Osman's at Plevna. But the 
political importance of Richmond as the capital of a 
great State and of the Confederacy, its real strategic 
advantages as the nucleus of a railway system and 
other communications, embracing Virginia and the 
States to the South and West, and still more, the 
startling fact that its manufacturing establishments, 
though poor and inadequate, were at first absolutely, 
and always practically, the sole resource of the South 
for artillery and railway material — these considera- 
tions, in their combined strength, brought about, in 
the minds of those directinof the Confederate govern- 
ment, a conviction of the indispensable necessity of 
Richmond to the life of the Southern cause. 

Washington talked of retreating, in the last resort, 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE. 23 

to the mountains of West Augusta, and there main- 
taining an undying resistance to the British invaders. 
It is possible that such a guerilla warfare might have 
succeeded a hundred years ago against an enemy 
coming across the Atlantic, before the use of steam on 
sea and river and railway, and before even turnpikes 
connected the coast with the mountains. It is possi- 
ble. But the probability is that, as in other contests, 
the end of oro^anized re^Lilar warfare would have 
been the virtual end of the struggle. How much 
more must this have been the case in our recent war, 
when military armaments had already become com- 
plex and artificial ! Modern armies, with their elabo- 
rate small arms, artillery, and ammunition, cannot be 
maintained without great mechanical appliances. 
They cannot even be fed without great lines of rail- 
way. And how can railways be utilized in a country 
closely blockaded without these same manufacturing 
resources ? 

All this was true from 1861 to 1S65. At no time 
during that period did there exist, south of Richmond, 
foundries and rolling-mills, capable, in a year's work, 
of supplying the Confederate armies and railways for 
three months. In the first part of the war, the nucleus 
of such establishments could not be found elsewhere 
in the South. In the latter part, beginnings had been 
made, but the new production of cannon and railway 
material never became adequate to the demands of a 



24 ROBERT ED WARD LEE. 



campaign. If the requisite machinery could have been 
improvised, the product could not have been hastily 
increased, because of the absolute lack of skilled 
workmen. The loss of the skilled artisans of Rich- 
mond would have been as fatal, in our poverty, as the 
loss of its mills and workshops. 

The defence of Richmond, then, was the superhu- 
man task to which Lee now found himself committed 
by the policy of the Confederate Government, and 
by the pressure of conditions, independent of his will 
or control. 

How precious for us Virginians is this intimate 
association of his immortal labors with this city of our 
affections — for more than a century the centre of our 
State life, for four years of heroic struggle the invio- 
late citadel of a people in arms ! The familiar ob- 
jects about us are memorials of him ; the streets 
which his feet have trodden, the church where he wor- 
shipped, the modest dwelling which sheltered those 
nearest his heart, the heights overlooking river 
and land which make up the military topography 
he had so deeply studied, and the graves of that 
silent army by which our city is still begirt. You can 
hardly prolong your evening walk without coming 
upon fields, once like any others, but now touched 
with that mysterious meaning which speaks from 
every spot where for home and kindred men have 
fought and died. 



ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 25 



Thus, at the critical moment when a trifling ad- 
vance of McClellan's forces would have begun a 
siege of Richmond, Lee took command of the army 
marshalled for its defence. His first step was to 
overrule opinions tending to a retirement of our line. 
His next was to fortify that line, and to summon to 
his aid, for a great aggressive effort, all the forces 
that could be spared in Virginia, Georgia, and the 
Carolinas. In his comprehensive plan for the great 
day of battle now at hand was embraced that small 
but heroic band with which Jackson had just defeated 
three armies, filled the Federal capital with alarm, 
and diverted from McClellan McDowell's powerful 
reinforcement. 

The secrecy in which Lee knew how to wrap this 
movement was itself a presage of generalship. He 
not only concealed Jackson's rapid march, so that 
Shields and McDowell should not follow on his heels, 
but, by an actual movement by rail of Whiting's divi- 
sion to Charlottesville, he made McClellan believe 
that he was sending a strong detachment to the Val- 
ley. Then, with an army still inferior to its adver- 
sary by at least one-fourth, he burst upon McClel- 
lan's right wing. By Lee's wise and bold combina- 
tions, the weaker army showed, at the point of attack, 
double the strength of the stronger. The Federal 
general saw his communications snatched from his 
control, his right wing, after an obstinate and bloody 



26 ROBERT ED WARD EEE. 



conflict, broken and put to flight, his whole army turn- 
ing its back upon the goal of the campaign, and fight- 
ing now, as men fight on issues of life and death — 
not for Richmond — but for safety and a refuge-place 
under the guns of the fleet. 

I need not recall the valor, the sacrifices, the 
chequered fortunes, or the visible trophies of those 
seven days of heroic struggle. Whatever criticism 
may be passed upon the details of the several actions, 
the broad fact remains that, as their direct result, that 
moral ascendency, which is the real genius of victory, 
forsook the Federal and passed over to the Confede- 
rate camp. And Lee rose up, in the minds of friend 
and foe, to the full stature of a great and daring leader. 

An act of vigor quickly showed how correctly he 
estimated the staggering effect of the mighty blow he 
had dealt. He hurried Jackson to Gordonsville to 
meet Pope's threatening force, and soon he dispatched 
A. P. Hill's division on the same service. Jackson's 
fierce attack on Banks at Cedar Mountain at once 
caused new alarm for Washington. A rapid weak- 
ening of McClellan's force was the result. Reading 
this with that intuitive perception of what is passing 
behind the enemy's lines, which henceforth marks him 
as fit to command, Lee recognizes that the initiative 
is now in his hands, and presently moves with nearly 
his whole army to the line of the Rapidan. His design 
is by celerity and vigor to counterbalance the enor- 



ROBERT ED WA RD L EE. 27 

mous preponderance of his enemies. He means to 
fall upon Pope before McClellan's army can join him. 
You know the splendid boldness of Jackson's immor- 
tal march to Pope's rear, which Lee approved and 
ordered. You know how, after prodigies of rapid 
movement, obstinate fighting, and intrepid guidance, 
the Army of Northern Virginia stood once more 
united on the plains of Manassas, and there baffled 
and crushed an adversary its superior by one-half in 
numbers. Again the Federal army turned its back 
upon the goal of the campaign, again the Federal 
army bent its march — not to its commander's, but to 
Lee's imperious will. The invasion of Maryland, the 
capture of Harper's Ferry attested it, and Lee's vic- 
torious sweep was only checked by one of those un- 
lucky accidents inseparable from war. His order for 
the combined movements of his troops fell into 
McClellan's hands when the ink upon it was scarcely 
dry. 

This precipitated the great battle of Sharpsburg. 

On that sanguinary field 40,000 Confederates 
finally repulsed every attack of an army of 87,000 
Federal soldiers. On the day following the batde 
they grimly stood in their long, thin lines, inviting the 
assault which, as history will record, was not deliv- 
ered. 

If ever commander was tried by overwhelming and 
continuous peril, and rose superior to it, and tri- 



28 ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 



umphed by sheer moral power over force and for- 
tune, Lee on those two fateful days gave that supreme 
proof of a greatness of soul as much above depres- 
sion under reverses as elation in success. In such 
moments the army feel the lofty genius of their leader. 
They acknowledge his royal right to command. They 
recognize their proud privilege to follow and obey. 
To such leaders only is it given to form heroic sol- 
diers. Such were the rao-ored, half-starved men in 
gray who stood with Lee at Sharpsburg. 

It is a vision of some such moment, perhaps, that 
our sculptor, Mercie, has caught with the eye of 
genius, and fixed in imperishable bronze. The Gen- 
eral has ridden up, it seems to me, in some pause of 
battle, to the swelling crest of the front line, and, 
while the eyes of his soldiers are fastened on him 
in keen expectancy, but unwavering trust, the great 
leader — silent and alone with his dread responsi- 
bility — is scanning, with calm and penetrating glance, 
the shifting phases and chances of the stricken field. 
Such is the commanding figure which will presently 
be unveiled to your view, and dull, indeed, must be 
the imagination that does not henceforth people this 
plain with invisible hosts, and compass Lee about — 
now and forever — with the love and devotion of em- 
battled ranks of heroic men in gray. 

But the campaign of 1862 was yet to close in a 
dramatic scene of unequalled grandeur. 



ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 29 

As in some colossal amphitheatre, Lee's soldiers 
stood ranked on the bold hills encircling Fredericks- 
burg to witness the deployment on the plain beneath, 
with glittering bayonets and banners and every mar- 
tial pomp, of Burnside's splendid army. A gorgeous 
spectacle was spread out under their feet. It was 
hard to realize that such a pageant was the prelude 
to bloody battle. But the roar of a hundred great 
guns from the Stafford heights quickly dispelled any 
illusion, and the youngest recruit could see and 
applaud the marvellous skill with which the Confede- 
rate commander, so recently baffled in his plan of in- 
vasion, was now interposing a proud and confident 
army across the latest-discovered road to Richmond. 
At the opportune moment, Lee's line of twenty-five 
miles contracted to five, and 78,000 Confederates 
calmly awaited the assault of 113,000 Federal sol- 
diers. That assault was delivered. On rushed line 
after line of undaunted Northern soldiers. Braver 
men never marched more boldly to the cannon's 
mouth. But their valor was unavailinor. As Stone- 
wall Jackson said, his men sometimes failed to carry a 
position, but never to hold one. The most deter- 
mined courage and a carnage, appalling from its con- 
centration, served only to mark the heroism of the 
Northern soldier. But the prize of victory remained 
with Lee. At one blow the Federal invasion was 
paralyzed, and for months and months the great 



30 ROBERT EDWARD LEE. 



Northern host lay torpid in the mud and snow of a 
Virginian winter. 

The repose of that winter strengthened the Federal 
army, but weakened Lee's, for he had been obliged 
to detach Longstreet with two divisions to South- 
eastern Virginia. Hence the last days of April, 1863, 
found Lee confronting Hooker's army of 131,000 
men with only 57,000 Confederates. 

If I mention these respective numbers so often, it 
is because they constitute the indestructible basis of 
Lee's military fame. You will search in vain in his- 
tory for a parallel to such uniform, excessive, and 
prolonged disparity in numbers, such amazing in- 
feriority in all the material and appliances of war, 
crowned by such a succession of brilliant, though 
dearly-bought victories. If these considerations in 
themselves establish Lee's fame, they also vindicate 
it from the only criticism to which it has been sub- 
jected. They justify and explain the comparatively 
indecisive character of those victories. When the 
odds are four to five, three to five, three to seven, 
when every man has fought, and there are no reserves, 
the victories of the weaker army must of their very 
nature fail to destroy an adversary of the same proud 
race, of equal, if of different valor. 

The events we now approach present Lee in every 
phase of the consummate commander. Can you 
imagine an attitude of grander firmness than that in 



ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 31 



which we see him on Hooker's crossing the Rappa- 
hannock? There was a letter from him to the Con- 
federate Secretary of War, written at that moment, 
which showed him in this mood of heroic calm, wait- 
ing- for the development of the enemy's purpose, 
determined to fight, but giving no hint of that tremen- 
dous lion-spring at Chancellorsville, which was to 
pluck out the very heart of the Federal invasion. 

The plan of that great battle, as happens with 
many master-works, was struck out at a single blow, 
in a brief conference with Jackson, on the evening 
of the 1st of May. 

An eye-witness has depicted the scene — the solemn 
forest, the rude bivouac, the grave and courteous 
commander, heir of all the knightly graces of the 
cavaliers, the silent, stern lieutenant, with the faith 
and the fire of Cromwell, the brief interchano-e of 
question and answer, the swiftly following order for 
the movement of the morrow. 

The facts of the enemy's position and the surround- 
ing topography had just been ascertained. The 
genius of the commander, justly weighing the charac- 
ter of his adversary, the nature of the country, and 
the priceless gift in his own hands of such a thunder- 
bolt of war. such a Titanic force as Jackson, instantly 
devised that immortal flank march which will emblazon 
Chancellorsville on the same roll of deathless fame 
with Blenheim, with Leuthen, with Austerlitz, and 
Jena. 



32 ROBER r ED WARD LEE. 



The battle of Chancellorsville will rank with the 
model battles of history. It displayed Lee in every 
character of military greatness. Nothing could ex- 
ceed the sublime intrepidity with which, leaving Early 
to dispute the heights of Fredericksburg against 
Sedgwick's imposing force, he himself led five weak 
divisions to confront Hooker's mighty host Lee 
meant to fight, but not in the dark. He meant first 
to look his adversary in the eye. He meant to see 
himself how to aim his blow. Where shall we find 
a match for the vigor, the swiftness, the audacity of 
that fiank march assigned to Jackson — for the fierce 
and determined front attack led by Lee himself? 
There is nothing equal to it save only Frederick's 
immortal stroke of daring on the Austrian flank at 
Leuthen. But the second day brings out the strong- 
est and grandest lines of the Confederate com- 
mander's heroic character. Jackson has been stricken 
down Lee's right arm has been torn from him ; but, 
the unconquerable firmness of his nature resisting 
every suggestion of weakness, and that inborn love 
of fight, without which no general can be great, blaz- 
ing out and kindling all it touched, he forces on the 
fierce attack along the whole line till, in a wild tumult 
of battle, the Federal army wavers, gives ground, 
melts away. The advance. If pushed, will drive the 
enemy in confusion to the river. And Lee is pre- 
paring for a combined assault. But a new element 
now bursts into the action. News is brought from 



ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 33 

ten miles away that the Confederates have been 
driven from the heights of Fredericksburg towards 
Richmond, and Sedgwick is marching on Lee's rear. 
Lee's celerity and firmness are equal to the crisis. 
He promptly hurls four brigades from under his own 
hand at the head of Sedgwick's column, and with 
bold countenance hems in Hooker's army of nearly 
thrice his own numbers. If it were not the sternest 
tragedy, it might be comedy— this feat of thirty thou- 
sand men shutting up eighty thousand. But Hooker 
has been beaten, the decisive point is not there, as the 
eye of genius can intuitively see. It is with Sedo-- 
wick six miles away, and, realizing in his practice the 
golden maxim of the schools, Lee is quickly at that 
point in sufficient, if not superior force. Sedo-wick 
is crushed on the third day, and driven across the 
river. Lee now concentrates all his force to fall upon 
Hooker with a final and overwhelming blow. The 
fifth day breaks, and lo ! the Federal army has van- 
ished, not a man of them save the dead, the wounded, 
and the prisoners remaining on the Richmond side 
of the Rappahannock. 

What was left undone by Lee that genius, con- 
stancy, and daring could effect ? Will any man say 
that the Confederate army should have followed its 
defeated, but colossal adversary across the river ? 
This would have been to invite disaster. 

The substantial and astounding fruits of victory 



34 ROBERT EDWARD LEE. 



were won In the collapse for that season of the Fed- 
eral invasion, in the masterly initiative which Lee was 
now able to seize, in the submissive and tell tale 
docility with which Hooker thenceforth followed every 
motion of the mao^ic wand of the Confederate com- 
mander. 

The march to the Potomac and the captures by the 
way renewed the glories of 1862. For a few short 
weeks Virginia was freed from the tramp of armies. 
But, as before, the invasion, begun with an intoxicat- 
ing outburst of martial hope, was doomed to end in 
a drawn and doubtful battle. After a bloody struggle 
on the heights of Gettysburg, the two armies stood 
the greater part of two long summer days defiantly 
looking into each other's eyes. Neither was willing 
to attack its adversary. However deeply Lee may 
have felt the failure of his daring stroke, he took 
upon himself all the reproach and all the responsi- 
bility of the result. No word of criticism or censure 
passed his lips. But, confident of the devotion and 
the steadiness of his army, he promptly turned to the 
duty of the hour. What an example of serenity, of 
imperturbable firmness! We owe to Gettysburg not 
only the most thrilling spectacle of the unsurpassed 
valor of the Confederate soldier, but a matchless 
exhibition of composure and magnanimity in the 
Confederate commander. The aggressive campaign 
failed, but neither the army nor its general was shaken. 



ROBERT ED WA RD LEE. 35 

We find them during the remainder of 1863 facing 
their old foe with undiminished spirit. And soon Lee 
gives proof of equal firmness, enterprise, and gener- 
osity in detaching Longstreet's corps to strike a deci- 
sive blow, eight hundred miles away, by the side ot 
Bragg at Chickamauga. The annals of war do not 
exhibit a more unselfish act. 

How shall I briefly describe the added titles to 
enduring fame with which the campaign of the next 
year, 1864, invested our great leader? Who that 
lived througrh that time can forget the awful hush of 
those calm spring days, which ushered in the tremen- 
dous outburst of the Federal attack along a thousand 
miles of front ? 

In every quarter, at one and the same moment, the 
Confederacy felt the furious impact of a whole na- 
tion's force driven on by the resistless will of a single 
commander. Grant's aggressiveness, Grant's stub- 
bornness. Grant's unyielding resolve to destroy the 
Confederate armies, seemed suddenly to animate 
every corps, every division, almost every man of the 
Federal host. Even now we stand aghast at the 
awful disparity in the numbers and resources of the 
two armies. Swinton puts the force under Grant's 
immediate eye on the first day of the campaign at 
140,000 men. Grant himself puts it at 116,000. It 
is certain that Lee had less than 64,000 soldiers of all 
arms. But, in addition, Grant was directing against 



36 ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 



Richmond or its communications 30,000 men under 
Butler, 17,000 under Sigel and Crook, and a numer- 
ous and powerful fleet. 

Let me give two examples of the extraordinary- 
means at his disposal. He never went into camp but 
that, within an hour or two, every division was placed 
in telegraphic communication with his headquarters. 
Lee could only reach the several parts of his army by 
the aid of mounted couriers. But this is the most 
striking. On four several occasions Grant shitted his 
base by a simple mandate to Washington to lodge 
supplies at Fredericksburg, at Port Royal, at the 
White House, at City Point, llius, his communica- 
tions were absolutely invulnerable. With the bound- 
less wealth at his control, he laid under contribution 
the resources of the commerce and manufactures of 
the world, and, combining all the agencies of destruc- 
tion in the vast host under his command, fired now 
with something of his own smothered, but relentless 
passion, he hurled it in repeated and bloody assaults 
at the heart of the Confederacy, 

The heart of the Confederacy was the Army of 
Northern Virginia. 

Surely, heroic courage never faced a more tremen- 
dous crisis than Lee now met and mastered. Grant 
had crossed the Rapidan. No idea of retreat entered 
Lee's mind. He only waited to discover the purpose 
of the enemy. Then, with fierce energy, he hurled 



ROBERT EDWARD LEE. 37 

two corps at the heads of his cohimns, not even halt- 
ing for Longstreet to come up. 

For two days that awful struggle raged in the dark 
and gruesome thickets of the Wilderness, Lee could 
not drive back his stubborn adversary, but he stag- 
gered and stunned and foiled him. Any previous 
commander of the Army of the Potomac would have 
retreated. Grant sullenly steals off by night to Spot- 
sylvania. 

But a lion is there in his path. The road to Rich- 
mond is blocked by Lee. Grant's determination to 
force a passage brings on one of the fiercest and 
most protracted struggles of the war. For four days 
out of twelve that raging fire-flood surges about the 
lines of Spotsylvania, The very forest is consumed 
by it. How can man withstand its fury? Only by 
that courage which in its contempt of death is a pre- 
sage of immortality. On such a field the human 
spirit rises even in common men to transcendent 
heights of valor and self-sacrifice, the great soul of 
the commander moves through the wild chaos like 
some elemental force, and the terrible majesty of war 
veils its horrors. 

Grant cannot take those lines. The solitary advan- 
tage won at the salient by his overwhelming masses 
does but display on an immortal page the quick re- 
source, the commanding authority, the unconquerable 
tenacity of the Confederate General. Grant could 



ROBERT ED WARD LEE. 



not drive him from those Hnes ; but the commander 
of a greatly superior army can never find it hard to 
turn his adversary's position, especially if, by means 
of a fleet and convenient rivers, he can shift his base 
as easily as write a dispatch. Yet Lee always divined 
every turning movement, and always placed his army 
in time across the path of its adversary. 

In the succession of bloody battles ending with the 
slaughter of Cold Harbor, he everywhere won the 
substantial fruits as well as the honors of victory, and 
between the Wilderness and the Chickahominy, in 
twenty-eight days he inflicted on Grant a loss of 
60,000 men — an appalling number, equal to the 
strength of Lee's own army at the beginning of the 
campaign. 

Try to conceive the intense strain of those twenty- 
eight days. Jackson is no longer by Lee's side, 
Longstreet has been stricken down severely wounded 
on the first day. Suppose a single moment of hesi- 
tation in the commander, a single false interpretation 
of obscure and conflicting appearances, a failure at 
any hour of the day or night to maintain in their per- 
fect balance all those high faculties which we see 
united in Lee, and what would have availed the valor 
of those matchless Confederate soldiers? Can we 
wonder that they loved him, can we wonder that, like 
Scipio's veterans, they were ready to die for him, if 
he would only spare himself? Thrice in this cam- 



ROBER T ED WARD LEE. 39 

paign did they give him this supreme proof of per- 
sonal devotion. 

Of the siege of Petersburg I have only time to say 
that in it for nine months the Confederate commander 
displayed every art by which genius and courage can 
make good the lack of numbers and resources. But 
the increasing misfortunes of the Confederate arms 
on other theatres of war gradually cut off the supply 
of men and means. The Army of Northern Virginia 
ceased to be recruited. It ceased to be adequately 
fed. It lived for months on less than one-third 
rations. It was demoralized, not by the enemv in its 
front, but by the enemy in Georgia and the Carolinas. 
It dwindled to 35,000 men holding a front of thirty- 
five miles ; but over the enemy it still cast the shadow 
of its great name. Again and again, by a bold often - 
sive, it arrested the Federal movement to fasten on 
its communications. At last, an irresistible concen- 
tration of forces broke through its long, thin line of 
battle. Petersburg had to be abandoned. Richmond 
was evacuated. Trains bearing supplies were inter- 
cepted, and a starving army, harassed for seven days 
by incessant attacks on rear and fiank, found itself 
completely hemmed in by overwhelming masses. 
Nothing remained to it but its stainless honor, its 
unbroken courage. 

In those last solemn scenes, when strong men, 
losing all self-control, broke down and sobbed like 



40 ROBERT ED WARD LEE. 



children, Lee stood forth as great as in the days of 
victory and triumph. No disaster crushed his spirit, 
no extremity of danger ruffled his bearing. In the 
agony of dissohition now invading that proud army, 
which for four years had wrested victory from every 
peril, in that blackness of utter darkness, he preserved 
the serene lucidity of his mind. He looked the stub- 
born facts calmly in the face, and, when no military 
resource remained, when he recognized the impossi- 
bility of making another march or fighting another 
battle, he bowed his head in submission to that Power, 
which makes and unmakes nations. 

The surrender of the fragments of the Army of 
Northern Virginia closed the imperishable record of 
his military life. 

What a catastrophe! What a moving and pathetic 
contrast! On the one side, complete and dazzling 
triumph after a long succession of humiliating disas- 
ters ; on the other, absolute ruin and defeat — a crown 
of thorns for that peerless army which hitherto had 
known only the victor's laurel! But the magnanimity 
of the conqueror, not less than the fortitude of the 
vanquished shone out over the solemn scene, and 
softened its tragic outlines of fate and doom. The 
moderation and good sense of the Northern people, 
breathing the large and generous air of our western 
world, quickly responded to Grant's example, and, 
though the North was afterwards betrayed into fanati- 



R OBER T ED WA RD LEE. 4 1 

cal and baleful excess on more than one great sub- 
ject, all the fiercer passions of a bloody civil war were 
rapidly extinguished. There was to be no Poland, no 
Ireland in America. When the Hollywood pyramid 
was rising over the Confederate dead soon after the 
close of the contest, some one suo-Sfested for the in- 
scription a classic verse, which may be rendered: 

"They died for their country — their country perished with them." 

Thus would have spoken the voice of despair. 

Far different were the thoughts of Lee. He had 
drawn his sword in obedience only to the dictates of 
duty and honor, and, looking back in that moment of 
utter defeat, he might have exclaimed with Demos- 
thenes : " I say that, if the event had been manifest 
to the whole world beforehand, not even then ouo^ht 
Athens to have forsaken this course, if Athens had 
any regard for her glory, or for her past, or for the 
ages to come." But, facing the duty of the hour, Lee 
saw now that the question submitted to the arbitra- 
ment of war had been finally answered. He recog- 
nized that the unity of the American people had been 
irrevocably established. He felt that it would be 
impiety and crime to dishonor by the petty strife of 
faction that pure and unselfish struggle for constitu- 
tional rights, which, while a single hope remained, 
had been loyally fought out by great armies, led by 



42 ROBERT EDWARD LEE. 



heroic captains, and sustained by the patriotic sacri- 
fices of a noble and resolute people. He, therefore, 
promptly counselled his old soldiers to look upon the 
great country thus reunited by blood and iron as their 
own, and to live and labor for its honor and welfare. 
His own conduct was in accord with these teachings. 
Day by day his example illustrated what his manly 
words declared: "that human virtue should be equal 
to human calamity." 

For five years he was now permitted to exhibit to 
his countrymen, in the discharge of the duties of presi- 
dent of Washington College, the best qualities of citi- 
zen, sage, and patriot. In Plato's account of the edu- 
cation of a Persian king, four tutors are chosen from 
among" the Persian nobles — one the wisest, another 
the most just, a third the most temperate, and a fourth 
the bravest. It was the unique fortune of the stu- 
dents of Washington College to find these four great 
characters united in one man — their peerless Lee. 
As the people saw him fulfilling these modest, but 
noble functions ; as they saw him with antique sim- 
plicity putting aside every temptation to use his great 
fame for vulgar gain ; as they saw him, in self-respect- 
ing contentment with the frugal earnings of his per- 
sonal labor, refusing jevery offer of pecuniary assist- 
ance ; as they realized his unselfish devotion of all 
that remained of strenorth and life to the nurture of 



ROBERT ED WARD LEE. 43 



the Southern youth in knowleds^e and morals, a new 
conviction of his wisdom and virtue gathered force 
and volume, and spread abroad into all lands. 

The failure of the righteous cause for which he 
fought denied him that eminence of civil station, in 
which his great qualities in their happy mixture might 
well have afforded a parallel to the strength and the 
moderation of Washington. But what failure could 
obscure that moral perfection which places him as 
easily by the side of the best men that have ever 
lived, as his heroic actions make him the peer of the 
greatest? There are men whose influence on man- 
kind neither worldly success nor worldly failure can 
affect. 

"The greatest gift the hero leaves his race 
Is to have been a hero." 

This moral perfection, breathing the very spirit of 
his Christian faith, is no illusive legend of a succeed- 
ing generation exaggerating the worth of the past. 
Our belief in it rests upon the unanimous testimony 
of the men who lived and acted with him, among 
whom nothing is more common than the declaration, 
that Lee was the purest and best man of action whose 
career history has recorded. In his whole life, laid 
bare to the gaze of the world, the least friendly criti- 
cism has never discovered one single deviation from 
the narrow path of rectitude and honor. 

What was strained eulogy when Montesquieu said 



44 ROBERT ED WARD LEE. 



of another great soldier — Turenne — that " his Hfe was 
a hymn in praise of humanity" — is, if appHed to 
Lee, the language of sober truth. No man can con- 
sider his life without a feeling of renewed hope and 
trust in mankind. There is about his exhibitions of 
moral excellence the same quality of power in reserve 
that marks him as a soldier. He never failed to come 
up to the full requirements of any situation, and his 
conduct communicated the impression that nothing 
could arise to which he would be found unequal. His 
every action went straight to the mark without affec- 
tation or display. It cost him no visible effort to be 
good or great. He was not conscious that he was 
exceptional in either way, and he died in the belief 
that, as he had been sometimes unjustly blamed, so 
he had as often been too highly praised. 

Such is the holy simplicity of the noblest minds. 
Such was the pure and lofty man, in whom we see the 
perfect union of Christian virtue and old Roman 
manhood. His sfoodness makes us love his orreat- 
ness, and the fascination, which this matchless combi- 
nation exerts, is itsell a symptom and a source in us 
of moral health. As long as our people truly love 
and venerate him, there will remain in them a princi- 
ple of good. For all the stupendous wealth and 
power, which in the last thirty years have lifted these 
States to foremost rank among^ the nations of the 
earth, are less a subject for pride than this one heroic 

L.ofC. 



ROBERT ED WARD LEE. 45 



man — this human product of our country and its in- 
stitutions. 

Let this monument, then, teach to generations yet 
unborn these lessons of his Hfe ! Let it stand, not as 
a record of civil strife, but as a perpetual protest 
a^^ainst whatever is low and sordid in our public and 
private objects ! Let it stand as a memorial of per- 
sonal honor that never brooked a stain, of knightly 
valor without thought of self, of far-reaching military 
genius unsoiled by ambition, of heroic constancy from 
which no cloud of misfortune could ever hide the path 
of duty ! Let it stand for reproof and censure, if our 
people shall ever sink below the standards of their 
fathers ! Let it stand for patriotic hope and cheer, 
if a day of national gloom and disaster shall ever 
dawn upon our country ! Let it stand as the embodi- 
ment of a brave and virtuous people's ideal leader ! 
Let it stand as a great public act of thanksgiving and 
praise, for that it pleased Almighty God to bestow 
upon these Southern States a man so formed to re- 
flect His attributes of power, majesty, and goodness ! 



